Difference between a stand alone PC and a workstation connected to a network

• stand-alone PC A desktop or laptop computer that is used on its own without requiring a connection to a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). Although it may be connected to a network, it is still a stand-alone PC as long as the network connection is not mandatory for its general use.In offices throughout the 1990s, millions of stand-alone PCs were hooked up to the local network for file sharing and mainframe access. Today, computers are commonly networked in the home so that family members can share an Internet connection as well as printers, scanners and other peripherals. When the computer is running local applications without Internet access, the machine is technically a stand-alone PC.
• Workstation in the computer network. In the days of main frame computers, work stations were keyboards and printers, or monitors, which were linked to the Central Processing Unit, which performed all the functions. In asdfadfadfadfdfabecame available, workstations were given limited storage capacity, so that characters are stored in a memory inside the workstation until the CPU polls the work station to dump its data into a buffer, or holding area, in the CPU. These work stations resembled stand-alone computers, but did not have the ability to run programs. Work stations have disappeared, for the most part, as stand-alone computers have become much less expensive.
  Some applications still have the term 'work station', where there is a central computer, called a server, which handles storing and retrieving data, for the stand-alone computers which are linked to it, thus reducing the amount of data stored on each computer. However, desk top computers have become so powerful that it is rare to have a central computer do the processing, with only input and output occurring at the work station.